


And I Ask for the Sea

by Roxie Ann (pluvial_poetry)



Category: Angels in America - Kushner
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluvial_poetry/pseuds/Roxie%20Ann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harper isn't lost at sea, only found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Ask for the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecondSilk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSilk/gifts).



> Thanks to Angie (mikeyface) for the confidence boosting and Damien Rice for the title.

 

 

Harper had a nightmare about the sea when she was a little girl. The overwhelming depth, dragging her under, keeping her down. She couldn't break the surface, no matter how hard she struggled. She knew that it would sweep her away and she would be lost. In most of her dreams she was lost.

And even as a child her dreams sometimes became reality. She'd take a bath and suddenly it was open water. And in her mind she would be screaming, screaming, screaming... Waiting to be pulled under where no one would save her.

When Harper first came to New York she dreamed of water, but it wasn't the same. At first. She would dream that the sea would cocoon her, protect her. She would wake up wet with her own tears, missing the warmth of being held.

There were other nights. She would dream that the sea would wash Joe clean and things would be the way they were supposed to be. Water could be the start of a new beginning, like birth. Water was a mother. Harper wished she could be.

*

Joe never wondered what Harper dreamed. He got that from Mother Pitt. But there were times, back home, when Joe was late coming back from work. Hannah would sit with Harper, probably to make sure that she wasn't hurting herself or anyone else. Harper would tell her about her dreams.

Wandering into the kitchen and asking, "Mother Pitt, do you ever think about what it would feel like to drown? You'd fight it and it would hurt, but then it must be beautiful when--"

Hannah would interrupt her with a frown. "What earthly good would it do me to think of such things?"

Hannah's world was dry and she considered that a blessing from the Lord. No rain, no flood and no tears. It was her son's world that she had to be concerned for. One disaster after another. If only Harper could settle down, stop living in her dream world. Satan had seduced Harper with his poetry and his promises. His lies.

And when Harper spoke of drowning, Hannah could hear the truth. As much as she believed in the purity of water, holy and baptismal, Hannah knew that Harper didn't want to be washed clean. That she would only be washed away. Then it would be Joe left to sink or swim. No longer buoyed by responsibility, duty. He would be lost, in over his head where Hannah couldn't reach him. Hannah would never have thought that her child's life would turn out this way. And it wasn't her nature to question why it had.

Hannah knew that only prayer would save Harper from being lost to the Lord. So Hannah wouldn't look up when next Harper asked her, "Do you think Jesus was afraid when he walked on water?"

She simply said, "No." Faith was enough.

Harper smiled in her dreamy manner. The answer seemed to satisfy her. And perhaps Harper would take it with her.

*

She did. She took it with her to Brooklyn. And then to Antarctica. The water moved under ice there and it was cold and furious. Harper marveled that she must have really gone over the deep end now. But if she knew she was insane at least her delusions hadn't taken over completely. There must be some semblance of sanity left to know that she was a whack job. Still.

She took a step. She wished she could tell Mother Pitt about this; that she had stood on top of the freeze barefoot and naked and she hadn't been afraid. But Mother Pitt probably wouldn't have listened to her. Joe got that from his mother too.

*

He wouldn't listen when Harper tried to tell him about the atmosphere, about the hole in the ozone layer that was growing so big that it might swallow the whole of the world before the beginning of the new millennium. She had begun to have dreams about it. She would whisper them to Joe as they lay in bed together. It wasn't a big bed, their bed. Just big enough for two people to lie side by side with a foot of space between them.

Joe would tell her, "Just go to sleep, Harper. Everything is fine. You'll see. It was only a dream."

Harper hated when he said things like that. She didn't know where his lies came from. Mother Pitt wouldn't have lied. Even when Harper was dreaming.

*

It was another dream. She and her baby were on the ship to Antarctica and it was rocking them so gently. Harper's peace almost felt real. As though it wasn't the product of two little blue pills.

But then the man with the knife came and no matter where Harper tried to run he would catch her, and take her baby from her. He would push Harper from the ship and she would fall through the ice, into the water and be left behind.

Sometimes Harper would snap out of it then. But sometimes she would keep dreaming. Mother Pitt would come then and tell her through the water that, "If you tried to be more realistic, Harper, perhaps you wouldn't be so troubled."

It sounded like something Mother Pitt would say. It wasn't exactly comforting but it was kind of nice to have someone familiar there. Joe never came.

And Harper never bothered to tell Joe about those dreams. There Joe would be, standing in front of her, golden and glowing. The Guardian Angel. And she couldn't understand why they couldn't save each other.

She tried.

*

"I think I want a water birth for our baby, Joe. Did you know that when babies are born they can hold their breath underwater?"

He wasn't paying attention again. So Harper continued. "Maybe we'll have a baby girl. She'll breathe underwater. Born with gills and fins, a mermaid. A mermaid in Manhattan."

He turned and looked at her, disappointed and weary. She felt the same way. "Don't say such things, Harper. You know it only upsets me."

Harper grimaced at that. "As long as you're not upset, Christ knows we wouldn't want that."

"Don't take the Lord's name in vain, please. You know--"

"A mermaid!" Harper shouted because shouting meant that maybe her husband would finally hear her. "We will swim away together. Through the river to the ocean to a new continent! Where you can't come. You won't come, I can feel it."

She would have walked away but he grabbed her arm, the first time he had touched her in weeks and spoke to her so sweetly. "You came with me, all the way to New York City. I would never leave you. I love you, buddy."

Harper wanted so much to believe him, to not be lost to him. But the nightmares were coming more now; again and again.

The man with the knife, and the sea, always taking Harper and no one would come for her. She wished she could tell Mother Pitt now that she wasn't afraid, but she was.

*

Finding out the truth about Joe and their marriage was one more nightmare where Harper was drowning. But this time she escaped her fate. Once she left, the water in the atmosphere embraced her and she became a part of the sea and the sky. No rain, no flood, no tears. And if Mother Pitt now sometimes wondered what Harper dreamed of, Harper would tell her if she could, that now in her dreams she was never lost in the water. Always and only found.

 

 

 

 

 

 

" _You give me miles and miles of mountains. And I ask for the sea._ "  
\- Damien Rice

 


End file.
